The owner of a Louisiana seafood distribution business in Lafourche Parish has been sentenced to six months of home confinement for trying to bribe an Internal Revenue Service agent to influence an audit of his business.U.S. District Judge Nannette Jolivette Brown also sentenced 63-year-old Vinh Q. Tran, of Cutoff, to three years of probation.
Tran pleaded guilty in January 2012 to a bribery charge. Prosecutors say he paid the agent $6,000 in cash and gave him 75 pounds of free shrimp. The agent was cooperating with investigators.
Tran had faced a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
He owned and operated St. Vincent Seafood Co. in Leeville. Prosecutors say Tran and his business owed the IRS roughly $2 million.
